James, William (1842-1910)

On Some Omissions of Introspective Psychology

January, 1884

"They involve no new psychic dimension, as when the transcendentalists, after letting a number of 'pure' feelings successively go 'bang,' bring their deus ex machina of an Ego swooping down upon them from his Olympian heights to make a cluster of them with his wonderful 'relating thought.'"

If then the fact known be the-sequence-of-green-to-red-and-the-contrast-of-these-two-colours, the state of mind in which that fact comes to knowledge must be quite other than the state of mind in which either pure red or pure green comes to knowledge. In other words, if we start the stream with a feeling of pure red as its first segment, we must follow that up with a second segment which is a feeling of green-as-sequent-upon-the-red-and-contrasted-with-it; or, if we insist on having a "pure" feeling of green, we may let it come in the second segment, and then follow with a third in which the complex relation of the objects of the first two segments is perceived. In either case, the stream must contain segments that are not "pure" elementary feelings. It must contain feelings of qualities-in-relation as well as of qualities absolute. But these feelings do not cease for that to be consubstantial with the rest of the stream. They can all be figured in the same straight line. They involve no new psychic dimension, as when the transcendentalists, after letting a number of "pure" feelings successively go "bang," bring their deus ex machina of an Ego swooping down upon them from his Olympian heights to make a cluster of them with his wonderful "relating thought".
(pp. 9-10)

Theater::Deus Ex Machina Machine

Reading

James, William. Mind, Vol. 9, No. 33 (Jan., 1884), pp. 1-26. <Link to JSTOR>

02/09/2010